My Asynchronous Collectable Card Game Rules

Types of Cards

• Hero - Basically a creature card, designed to be the basis of the game.  Each Hero has an Attack Strength and a Defend Strength.  Attacking Heroes use their Attacking Strength determine the outcome, and Defending Heroes use their Defending Strength to determine the outcome.
• Equipment - Enhances Heroes is some way.  Equipment is attached directly to the Hero, and goes to the graveyard when the Hero does.
• Artifact - Enhances the board in some way.  Can affect Players, Heroes, or any other card.  Unless they are destroyed and sent to the graveyard, they stay on the field.
• Trap - Laid out in advance, Trap cards activate based on a trigger.  Traps can be activated during an opponent’s turn, or they can be a reaction to another Trap.
• Spell - Spells are abilities the player casts during their turn only.  They can affect anything, but are discarded after use.
• Mana - Mana cards are used when summoning Heroes, laying Traps, casting Spells, equipping Heroes, using Abilities, or placing Artifacts.  Players must use the right kind of Mana to utilize any card or ability.

Realms of the Board

• Hero Realm - This is where the Heroes sit when not in direct combat.
• Trap Realm - This is where the Traps are set, face down.
• Artifact Realm - This is where the Artifacts are set.
• Mana Realm - This is where the Mana cards are set.
• Combat Realm - This is where Heroes, Traps,  and Spells are set when in action.
• Library - This is where the player’s deck sits, with all cards face down.
• Graveyard - This is where used or destroyed cards go, with all cards face up.

Phases

• Beginning Phase - This is where any residual effects are applied or removed, where Mana is regenerated, and where the player starts their turn.
• Draw Phase - This is where the player draws their card.
• First Main Phase - This is where Heroes are summoned or switched between Attacking and Defending, Spells are cast, Traps are laid, Equipment is applied, and Artifacts are established.
• Combat Phase - This is where Heroes attack defending Heroes, Spells are cast, and Traps are activated.
• Second Main Phase - This is where Heroes are summoned or switched between Attacking and Defending, Spells are cast, Traps are laid, Equipment is applied, and Artifacts are established.
• Ending Phase - This is where any residual effects are applied or removed, and where the player ends their turn.
• Submitting Phase - This is where the player submits their turn to their opponent.

Each round, the player has a very specific number of Moves afforded to them.  Each action they take during the First Main Phase, Combat Phase, or Second Main Phase constitutes a Move, which includes summoning Heroes, Equipment, and Artifacts, activating Abilities, setting Mana, laying Traps, and casting Spells.  Ranked Matches will have 5 Moves, but Private Matches are open to the Host’s rule set.  The Host may choose to apply a handicap to themselves, but the Host will never have more Moves or health than the Guest.

At the beginning of the match, both players draw 6 cards.  If a player has more than 6 cards in their hand during the End Phase, they must discard as many cards of their choice into the Graveyard as it takes to reach 6 cards.  The player who starts first does not draw a card during their first round, nor are they allowed to attack during their first round.  There is no restriction to attacking after the first round.

Heroes may be set to either an Attacking Position or a Defending Position during either Main Phase.  Attacking Heroes are not required to attack during the Combat Phase, but all Defending Heroes are subject to attack by their opponent’s Heroes.  During the Combat Phase, players must attack any Defending Hero on the field with their Attacking Heroes before attacking the player directly.  Both the Attack Level and the Defense Level of each Hero will play a factor into each engagement.  If the Attack Level is higher than the Defense Level of the opposing Hero, then that opposing Hero dies and goes to the Graveyard.  If the Hero survives the encounter, they maintain the damage taken to their Defense Level until the End Phase, where all Attack Levels and Defense Levels of remaining Heroes gets reset.  Any changes made to the Attack Level or the Defense Level from Equipment or Artifacts attached to the Hero are unaffected by the End Phase.  The Attacking Position is indicated by the card being positioned normally on the board, with the Defending Position being indicated by the card being positioned perpendicular to the player.

Traps are automatically triggered by the conditions established on the card.  Once a Trap is triggered, and its effects activated, the Trap goes to the Graveyard.  Not all Traps have to be negative in nature.  Trap cards can also include effects like reviving a Hero if they’re killed during the Combat Phase.

Hero Abilities can be activated at any point during the player’s turn.  If the ability requires Mana, then it will be tapped as needed.  No Ability can be activated during the opponent’s turn.  Using Abilities will not induce any other action, unless otherwise noted.  Heroes don’t get tapped, so they won’t get tapped.  Activating Abilities uses a Move.  No Hero will have any kind of attribute.  There will be no flying, bypassing defenders, or any other kind of attribute.  Some Heroes may have Abilities that give them special privileges, but they aren’t natural to the card, and they must use a Move in order to activate it.

Each Faction has a specific type of Mana that it draws upon for its various functions.  Players are allowed to mix and match cards from the various Factions, but they must use the prescribed Mana that is indicated on the card.  While there is no neutral Mana, some cards can have requirements to utilize more than one Faction’s Mana type.  Mana must be tapped in order to utilize for any requirement, but any unused tapped Mana that is still there during the End Phase will burn.  Turn the Mana card perpendicularly to indicate it has been tapped.  New cards may be added to Factions at any point, and entirely new Factions can be added at any point.

Each Deck must have a minimum card count of 40 cards, with no upwards limit.  The recommended Deck size is 40-60 cards, but that is a suggestion, and not a rule.  The reason why 40 cards is the minimum deck size is to allow a more simplified deck capability, and so players can access the cards they want at a faster pace if they’d like.

A Legendary Hero is a card that is abnormally powerful, and the card will indicate it as a Legendary Hero card.  They usually have a larger Mana requirement, will have very unique abilities, and have higher Attack and Defense Levels.

Unless otherwise dictated on the card itself, there will be no more than the below listed number of cards with the same name in the player’s Library.

• 3 Hero cards
• 1 Legendary Hero card
• 3 Equipment cards
• 4 Trap cards
• 2 Artifact cards
• 4 Spell cards
• Unlimited Mana cards

There are only two ways to win the game.  Either by reducing the opponent’s health to 0 points, or if the opponent runs out of cards in their library.  The player’s life is set at 20 during Ranked Matches.  Hosts can change the amount of life available at the start of the match in Private Matches.


Here is a rough sketch of what the board would look like:

The Ages of Video Games

After a lot of thought and a little bit of research, I have divided video game history not by generation, but by era.  Each Age represents not only a technological step, but also a cultural one.  I am establishing this for referential purposes, so I'm not going to expand much further.  Below is the breakdown of each of the Ages.


The Discovery Age is anything that existed up until The Video Game Crash of 1977.  This covers the widest period in video game history, starting in 1947, with the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device.  This period is where engineers developed and experimented with the concepts of electronic entertainment.

The Golden Age is from 1977-1994.  This period is marked by the time after The Video Game Crash of 1977 up until the release of Sony's Playstation home console.  During this period, early gaming culture was being developed.  Games were mostly reserved for children, outcasts, and nerds (sometimes all three).  As the newest toy on the market, some kids used video games as a status symbol, only really delving into the most well known games.  The outcasts and the nerds of all ages developed their love affair with interactive escapism, growing the first communities both at home and over the Internet.

The Silver Age is from 1995-2003.  This period starts with the release of the Playstation up until the release of the Nintendo DS and the PSP.  Video Games were becoming commercial successes, the casual gaming market was introduced, and the expanded gaming culture was forming.  Hardcore titles like the Final Fantasy series were becoming household names.  Online gaming started becoming a mainstay in the industry, and people started paying thousands of dollars for initial release console.

The Current Age starts with the release of the Nintendo DS and the Playstation Portable (PSP) in 2004.  Social games, mobile games, fully connected platforms, and franchises that rival  movies sales mark the Current Age.  Video Games have started being accepted as legitimate forms of entertainment, and for once gaming culture is heavily influencing pop culture and the technology boom.  Facebook, Apple iOS, and Google Android OS are as much gaming platforms as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony home and handheld consoles.



On a side note, I found this graph of Internet service providers.  If you compare this to my Ages, it has an interesting correlation.  The Internet and Video Games grew up hand and hand with each other, which is probably why they're so closely interconnected.

Romancing the Game: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Video game romance has been around for a very long time in many different forms.  They've ranged anywhere from the teenage drama of Final Fantasy VIII to Mass Effect's attempt at courtship to Catharine's complex focus of fidelity.  While adding relationships to an industry as young as electronic interactive entertainment (read: video games) is a noble pursuit in an effort to bring a mature subject so early in the development cycle, it's not being handled in a way that provides social progress.

This isn't a problem that's limited to romantic entanglements.  Video games have always been very awkward with any kind of interpersonal relationship.  The two best examples that come to mind are Dragon Age and Gears of War.

In Dragon Age, when players make decisions their companions can agree or disagree.  Making the decision that you prefer without making anyone mad at you requires you to bring the right group along.  This can be frustrating, because you may need to bring Leliana so you can pick locks, but your decisions to go against the church make her hate you.  Don't worry, though, give her a flower or  some random momento and she'll forget that you disturbed Andraste's ashes (well, not in that case, but you get the idea).  The idea that friendship can be so easily manipulated is preposterous.  Relationships are complicated.  They require time to cultivate, not just a convenience of situation and bobbles.

In Gears of War, the relationship between Marcus and Dom seem to defy the situation they're in, not to mention their relationships with anyone else in proximity.  The writers don't seem to understand the ideas that people grow, both together and apart, based on the decisions that they make.  Marcus and Dom are supposed to be brothers, but they only express any kind of connection during Bro moments.  There is no wax or wane of how they connect with each other.  The death of Dom's wife doesn't have any kind of impact on how he interacts with those around him.  I can say with all certainty that if my wife were to die, especially in such an impactful way, that it would definitely rock the foundation of every relationship I have.  Things would be tense for me, and I would test everyone with my attitude.  I would mourn for a little while but things would ultimately not change much.

These are two examples of how the video game industry can't seem to establish themselves with things as simple as friendships.  There are moments that shine, but they're even weighed down by preposterous situations.  That's why whenever romantic relationships come up, they often ring hollow.  How can an industry that can't seem to grasp friendship be ready to grasp something as complicated and intricate as intimacy.  It gets treated in a vacuum.  Romance is put in a bubble, with very little interaction, and it blossoms itself.

A prime example is in Mass Effect.  If a player goes and talks to their subject of interest, says everything they want to hear, but otherwise don't develop the relationship, they will fall deeply in love, which apparently means having sex and not acknowledging it until it randomly comes up.  This is the equivalent of the romantic comedy where the geeky guy who always listens to the girl ends up being the love of her life, and they live happily ever after (of course, that assumes that they have no real conflict other than something that can be fixed in like 3 minutes).  This is not how things work.  Romantic relationships are hard.  They require a lot of work, understanding, compromise, growth, attention, and connection.  It's all more than worth it when you found the right person, but it's either always there or it's not there at all.  You have to be apart of each other's lives, and you have to grow together, not just talk occasionally and hook up when it's convenient (that's called a booty call).

In the end, it's nice to see an attempt to see relationships become a bigger part of the gaming industry.  The only thing that needs to change is that relationships, be it romantic or platonic, need to ring throughout the narrative, not just be some random plot points that occasionally arise.

Old games aren't harder, they just suck

I'm well aware that the title of this post is going to insight more anger than it will thought, but you're going to have to hear me out on this one.

To start, I've been a gamer since the summer of 1986.  For those that can't do the math, I've been gaming for 25 years as of this post.  My first gaming experience was Castle Wolfenstein, which I played on my aunt's Apple II.  That is one of my earliest memories.  I talked to my mom, and she thinks I played some Pong before then, but I don't consider it in the equation since neither of us know for certain if I first played that before or after the summer of 1986.  My first console gaming experience was The Legend of Zelda in the fall of 1987.  I've been a hardcore gamer since.  I've played games ranging from Mr. Do! and Cops'n'Robbers on the Atari to Road Rash and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Slayer on the 3DO to The Death and Return of Superman and Maximum Carnage on the Genesis to Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation to Full Throttle and Diablo on the computer to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Mass Effect on the Xbox 360.  I've played on almost every console ever created (I never could find a Pippen), but I'm not here to list out my full gaming references.  I shared a sampling of my range of gaming experience to show the breadth of my experience.  I want you to understand that what I have to say comes from an experienced gamer who played most of the classics when they were originally released.

There is a common misconception that older games are harder, that today's developers have gone soft on the gaming community.  The idea actually stems from the idea that frustration is indicative of difficulty.  The measuring stick should actually be based on the level of challenge that the game provides.

Older games are naturally limited by the technology that they were designed to be played on.  Wolfenstein 3D couldn't have been played on the Atari 2600 because of the capabilities of the system at the time.  Developers used what capabilities that were available at the time.  I'm sure that the developers of Adventure wanted to make a game that was more like Skyrim, but it just wasn't technically feasible at the time.  In the same way that technical capabilities are a barrier, accepted gameplay mechanics have changed the landscape of gaming.  Time Crisis introduced the cover system utilized in Gears of War.  Customization and RPG elements weren't new to First Person Shooters when Modern Warfare came out, but the inclusion of so many features and Prestiging to extend the online life of a shooter was revolutionary.  Halo 2 popularized the Regenerative Health system, which had a major impact on the online experience, and completely flew in the face of the Health Pack system, the accepted norm.

With technological improvements and gameplay techniques constantly evolving, game designers haven't changed their mindset as to how to provide a better challenge to the gamer.  The previous mentality was to increase difficulty by increasing the health of enemies, decreasing the player's defensive or offensive capabilities, or to increase the number of enemies the player has to fight.  Those are simple solutions due to technical limitations brought on by older generations of gaming machines.

Clunky controls, old gaming mentalities, and limited AI capabilities formed into the best way to simulate difficulty:  Make difficulties based on how frustrated a gamer is, so they think that it's more challenging.  In short, old games suck, but gamers would challenge themselves to get better so the game would be less frustrating.  That is a significantly different viewpoint than the games being more challenging themselves.

I'm not without solutions.  Highlighting a problem without offering a solution is nothing more than complaining.  They may not be easy, but gaming is a multi-Billion Dollar Industry.  It seems to reason that investing some money into developing a better challenging experience, as opposed to just making things harder, would only serve to improve sales.

I'm not going to write a 60 page thesis on ways that game designers could improve the challenge of their games, but I will list a few solutions as examples to show how possible it is to come up with innovative ways to challenge a gamer and not frustrate them.

Solution #1:  Build the game around the hardest difficulty and offer more options for easier levels.  This can be the hardest or easiest way to improving the challenge for a gamer, depending on the type of game.  For puzzle games, it means that a level has to be designed with a whole lot of flexibility in mind.  For a game like Sudoku, this option is easy.  Sudoku puzzles are rated on difficulty based on the numbers given to a player.  For a game like Portal, however, each level is designed to be inherently at a specific challenge level, and adding or subtracting creates a significantly more complex problem for the designer than the player.  In a platformer, the hardest difficulty could have one very complex way to scale a building, with the player being forced  to rely on leaps of faith and extreme three dimensional spatial awareness to figure out how to progress.  The easier difficulties could add more and more shortcuts that require less complex thought in order to traverse.

Solution #2:  Adjust the enemy AI to account for more or less complex actions.  This is going to be the hardest of all of my solutions.  AI is a very tricky subject.  It's already something hard to program, then when you try to work with easier or harder difficulties, it becomes very easy to make too hard or too easy.  My suggestion would be to create a baseline AI that all enemies work on, and include more advanced tactics as the difficulty increases.  As an example, on Normal, the enemies are not stupid by any means, but they don't work in concert with their teammates to try to kill the player.  On Hard, they work as a team much more, and will cover each other to limit the player's actions.  On Expert, they utilize choreographed actions, like Breach and Clear tactics instead of just filling in to the room.  And on Master, they have a series of tactical techniques that they use in succession or in concert to outmaneuver the player.  In this example, the individual enemy isn't dumbed down for easier difficulties, so they can still provide a challenge, but the enemies have more complex tools at their disposal to increase the challenge.

Solution #3:  Adjust the enemy's range of tools.  This idea is very similar to Solution #2, but is much easier to program for.  Also note that I didn't say to just add more tools, because that's no different than giving them more health or improving their attack strength.  The idea here is that each enemy has a specialty, but their choice in specialty grows with the difficulty.  This way, the player doesn't necessarily have to deal with stronger enemies, but has to know how to deal with a wider array of enemies.  It also creates more complex combinations of enemies, so the player has to be good enough to be able to adjust their tactics for each unique situation.  As an example, the easier difficulties could outfit basic Rogues, Warriors, Mages, and Hunters for the player try to figure out how to defend against.  In the harder difficulties, Rogue class enemies that trained in dual wielding with stealth based techniques could specialize in flanking tactics, disarming tactics, subduing tactics, or poisoning tactics could provide very specific challenges, especially when there are 256 different specifications of enemies that all with their own strengths and weaknesses.  It becomes 1024 different types enemies if there are Humans, Elves, Dwarves, or Lizardmen.  Mix and match races, classes, specializations, techniques, and tactics, with a wide variety in the number of enemies, and each fight challenges the player to constantly develop new techniques to deal with a wide variety of tactics.  It's also possible to cross-cue classes and create a large number of combinations without as much of a wide variance in skills.  Middle grade difficulties offer differences of Black Mages, White Mages, and Summoners, where harder difficulties have Black Mages that can heal or Warriors that can use stealth techniques.

It's easy to come up with one solution to a problem.  It's another thing all together when a game designer has to figure out how to implement multiple techniques to the problem of challenge.  Unfortunately, the best way is to make a unique blend, because the biggest challenge for a gamer is when they are challenged in different ways by different developers and different games.